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Phenomenology: Dilthey, Epipistemology, and Interpretive Psychology

Eric Sean Nelson

Studia Phaenomenologica 2010 DOI: 10.7761/sp.10.19 (opens in new tab)

Study at a glance

AI-extracted from the abstract
Characteristics Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed
Topics Philosophy of mind
Citations 2
Key points Argues that Dilthey's interpretive psychology should not be read as reducing knowledge to psychology or psychology to subjective understanding, but as articulating the epistemic worth of a psychology grounded in embodied, historically situated consciousness, interpretive processes, structural-functional analysis, and recognition of the ungroundability and conflict inherent in knowledge and life.

Abstract

Responding to critiques of Dilthey's interpretive psychology, I revisit its relation with epistemology and the human sciences. Rather than reducing knowledge to psychology and psychology to subjective understanding, Dilthey articulated the epistemic worth of a psychology involving (1) an impure phenomenology of embodied, historically-situated, and worldly consciousness as individually lived yet complicit with its naturally and socially constituted contexts, (2) experience- and communication-oriented processes of interpreting others, (3) the use of third-person structural-functional analysis and causal explanation, and (4) a recognition of the ungroundability, facticity, and conflict inherent in knowledge and life.

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